


A Diamond Unsuspected

by Lomonaaeren



Series: July Celebration Fics [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Forced Bonding, Multi, Present Tense, Romance, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:05:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7404709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry and Draco meant to bond with each other. And somehow they ended up bonded to Neville Longbottom at the same time. But life means living, not simply resenting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Diamond Unsuspected

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my July Celebration fics, for the following prompt by aliasfanatic04: _So I'd like to see a Harry/Draco story of what their wedding day. However something goes wrong and somehow they wind up in a bond not only to each other but a third person as well. And they have to learn to how to love the third person and incorporate them into their lives together._

The bonding magic is twisting about them, swirls of silver and gold that rise from the wand of the officiating witch in front of them. Draco smiles at Harry over her wand, and Harry nods back. This is all going wonderfully, and there is nothing—  


But then the magic twists as the witch, leaning forwards and trying to get the light of her magic to reflect off the rings that Harry and Draco have already placed on each other’s fingers, stumbles. For a moment, Harry thinks that he can catch it on his own wand. He lunges—  


But even that doesn’t work. Instead, the magic spasms and shoots away from them, straight towards the audience. Some people shriek and duck, but the swirl of silver and gold coils around someone and slams him into the floor. Harry winces when he sees it’s Neville, who’s grown taller than the rest and so can’t duck as well.  
  
Draco says something angry, and the magic turns around and comes back as if listening. Then it wreathes around Harry and Draco, adding an extra sheen to the rings, as if that was the plan from the beginning. Harry breathes out slowly as the light disappears. Maybe it worked after all. Who can know until they test it?  
  
_Draco? Can you hear me?_  
  
But it’s not only Draco who answers, and anyway, Draco is using a wordless feeling more than words. There’s another voice, groggy. _What happened? My nose hurts. Harry?_ A longer pause, and Harry’s head fills with a sense of ill-defined panic. _Malfoy?_  
  
“Fuck!” Draco spits, ignoring the way that the older portion of their audience flinches at the word more than they did at the escaping magic. “We’re bonded to Longbottom, too.”  
  
*  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
Draco keeps his shoulders hunched as he stares out the windows of their house at the falling rain. It was supposed to be just _his_ house Well, his and Harry’s. But now Longbottom is intruding all the time.  
  
“You could at least call me Neville.”  
  
“Why? You don’t call me Draco.”  
  
There’s a long pause, and then Longbottom moves around until he’s standing next to Draco. Draco watches him out of the corner of a hostile eye. There’s just so _much_ to Longbottom. Long limbs that still don’t go where he wants them to, and eyes that can get clouded with confusion so quickly. Draco’s aware of all Longbottom’s claims to be considered a proper Gryffindor, but he still doesn’t really believe it, or want to believe it. He looks more like a Hufflepuff to Draco, and he always will. The platonic ideal of a Hufflepuff.  
  
Harry’s hair, meanwhile, is untamed and wild, and his eyes are a brilliant Slytherin green. Those aren’t the reasons Draco wanted to bond with him, but they’re part of the reason that he looked twice at Harry after the war.  
  
“I’m sorry to intrude this way,” Longbottom says, in the voice of someone who’s going to be polite if it kills him. “But I think we have to consider the possibility that the bond can’t be undone. That’s true, isn’t it?”  
  
Draco sighs long enough and hard enough that he hopes Longbottom will give up and go back to the room that Draco had reluctantly given him; it was originally going to be a guest room for when people visited him and Harry. But there’s Longbottom, standing immovably, and Draco finally nods. “We’ve talked and talked to the witch who bonded us, but she’s confirmed there’s nothing we can do. Accidental magic like that is very hard to undo.”  
  
“Of course it is,” Longbottom says to himself. Draco turns around, ready to defend himself if Longbottom dares to suggest there’s any way _Draco_ could have influenced this, and Longbottom holds up his hands defensively. “No, no, don’t worry. I don’t intend to blame you for this. The witch stumbled. We all saw it.”  
  
“Then what do you want?”  
  
Longbottom considers him for long enough that Draco shuffles his feet and longs for Harry to come back from Auror training. Harry is the one who buffers him and Longbottom, and asks Longbottom questions and tries to draw him into conversation, while Draco mostly sits there and scowls and tries not to accept that this happened.  
  
“The bond is there,” Longbottom says. “It can’t be undone. And even if I could bond with someone else, it’s never going to be as close as the bond I have with you and Harry.”  
  
Draco nods reluctantly. That’s true. Every wizard only has room for one primary marriage bond, which is why plain weddings are more in fashion than bondings nowadays. They can be bonded to more than one person—as witness _this_ disaster—but they can’t have a separate bond that supersedes that. And that remains true even if their partner dies.  
  
Mother questioned why Draco wanted a bond like this, when Harry could go into danger as an Auror. But Draco is convinced that Harry is worth it.  
  
Longbottom…not so much.  
  
“And the bond is already working,” Longbottom continues quietly. “I know you know I wasn’t as close to Harry as Ron and Hermione are. But he’s already willingly spending more time with me.”  
  
Again Draco nods. That’s just the bond. That’s the way it works. It’s the main reason so many arranged bondings were successful in the past.  
  
“So.” Longbottom sets his shoulders. “We can either be dragged along like rats in a windstorm, squealing about the loss of our dignity, or we can try to be true to our heritage and meet the fate proudly and with our own choice.”  
  
Draco blinks and eyes Longbottom for a moment. He wants to say that Longbottom can’t have the same sense of family pride as Draco, precisely because he isn’t a Malfoy. And how would he know what his parents wanted, anyway?  
  
But from Longbottom’s set jaw, Draco knows that he must have heard stories of them. Maybe enough to implant him with a different kind of family pride.  
  
“All right,” Draco agrees. “Neville.”  
  
And Longbottom smiles, and Draco knows—bond-influenced or not—that he already thinks of him as more handsome than he did before the bonding, when he barely bothered to think about him at all.  
  
“Thanks, Draco.”  
  
*  
  
Harry is, without a doubt, the easier one to be with, Neville thinks.  
  
Maybe it actually helps that Harry didn’t grow up with romantic tales of the primary marriage bond being the most important one you can ever have. Neville is used to hearing stories like that, and also stories of Muggleborns who refuse to bond in a panic because they hear about it changing their minds or their personalities and don’t want to go through with that.  
  
But Harry is cheerful about the possibility. He maybe listened to that kind of reasoning from Draco before they bonded, Neville thinks. And he comes home from Auror training and is perfectly willing to listen to Neville’s tales of magical plants, both dangerous and not, that he’s growing in his greenhouses.  
  
Neville does have to admit that the soil and sunlight at Malfoy Manor is excellent. And while Draco’s parents still live in the house, they spend half their time abroad, at some holiday home or another, and in another wing anyway. It’s surprisingly easy to ignore them.  
  
They all have to live in Malfoy Manor because Draco is the First in their bond—the one who has the most money and the biggest house, so he has to provide for the rest. That’s one of the things Neville asks Harry about, a fortnight after the bonding, when they’re sitting in one of the bay windows that overlooks the sweep of garden Neville is transforming.  
  
“Why did you agree to move in with Draco?” Neville asks, dipping a bit of buttered bread in his tea. Although that’s something he can only admit to himself, Neville also likes the way house-elves can tell what he likes and make it instinctively.  
  
“You mean, give up my freedom?”  
  
Neville blinks. Harry is grinning at him over his teacup, and he can tell he doesn’t really mean it. Besides… “Hermione?”  
  
Harry nods and swallows his own scone with a snap and a gulp that make Neville smile. Gran would be horrified. “She thinks I should live on my own. She thinks we shouldn’t have bonded like this at all. Of course she’s supportive of me being bonded to Draco—of _us_ being bonded to Draco,” he continues hastily, looking at Neville out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Neville reaches out and squeezes Harry’s hand. The bond urges physical contact between all three of them, but it’s so easy with Harry. Harry always tries to include Neville as much as he can.  
  
“But she thinks that we’ll give up parts of ourselves if we live in Malfoy Manor and spend Draco’s money and eat his food.”  
  
Neville blinks. “But she doesn’t understand the bond _does_ require us to give up parts of ourselves?”  
  
“She sort of understands. That’s why she’s getting married to Ron, not bonded. But at the same time, she thinks it should be easy to resist.”  
  
Neville snorts hard enough to almost slop some of the tea over the side of his cup. He hastily catches it, although he knows it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. An elf would have appeared in a second to mop it up. “No offense, mate, but I’m glad you’re not resisting it. It’s hard enough with—Draco.” And hard enough to accustom himself to using Draco’s first name, even though Neville was the one to insist on it.  
  
“No offense taken.”  
  
“Why _aren’t_ you resisting, though?”  
  
Harry looks out the window, and his eyes take on that faraway, misty look he gets sometimes. Neville is absolutely sure that he’s thinking of his Muggle relatives when he does that, and his next words prove Neville is right.  
  
Someday, Neville is going to find Harry’s Muggles and have a little chat with them.  
  
“Because I always wanted a home of my own,” Harry says softly. “One that was _there_ , that I didn’t have to make. And a big family. One I could add to, but didn’t have to make from scratch, either. That was why I was so disappointed when I realized that most of my father’s close relatives are dead, and all the Blacks except Andromeda and Narcissa and Teddy are gone.”  
  
“And Draco.”  
  
“Well. Draco doesn’t consider himself a Black. You _know_ that.”  
  
Neville snickers, thinking of the horrified way Draco examined his hair in a mirror after Neville thoughtlessly commented that Draco looked like one of the Black portraits hanging up in his Gran’s house.  
  
“I made my family with Ron and Hermione from scratch. But I was happy Draco still has parents alive, and I can be close to Teddy as his cousin by marriage as well as his godfather.”  
  
Harry turns his head, and Neville is struck by the utter sweetness of his smile. He’s heard that Harry goes to Professor Snape’s grave with flowers, and talks politely with Lucius Malfoy. Harry has a capacity for forgiveness that stuns everyone Neville knows.  
  
“And now that you’re here, my family is even bigger, that’s all,” Harry finishes with a shrug and a smile.  
  
Neville has to look away, a little, to keep from flushing at the strength of his own reaction.  
  
*  
  
Harry has learned the hard way that it’s better to be honest than not.  
  
Of course, his friends wouldn’t take that revelation as surprising. And probably not even Neville, who’s more than a friend now, would. It’s the way of Gryffindors, at least ideally. Lying during the war was probably harder on Ron and Hermione than Harry, especially lying to their families.  
  
But it might come as a surprise to Draco. It’s one reason that Harry tells him as soon as he can that he doesn’t mind Neville being in the bond.  
  
Of course, he’s said that before, and Draco doesn’t seem to be listening. But he has to when he comes on Harry and Neville strolling along the bed of exotic flowers that Neville’s added to the Manor’s gardens, and chatting about which ones are going to grow tallest, and how to keep house-elves from pruning where they’re not wanted.  
  
Draco stands and stares at them for a few minutes. Harry knows he’s there, but he doesn’t think Neville knows. He continues to chat, and Neville is just starting to describe how nicely violet sunflowers improve potions when he becomes aware of Draco. He flushes and closes his mouth at once.  
  
_No, don’t do that,_ Harry wants to say. It’s a nice mouth, a set of lips wide and full and not made for pursing the way Neville does now, no more than his face is for the blush he’s doing.  
  
_Blushing in excitement might be nice. Not flushing in shame._  
  
Harry knows his thoughts are changing because of the bond. But it’s hard not for them to change, not when he can catch leaks of stray thoughts from both Draco and Neville, and even more emotions. They try to be courteous, not to speak to each other directly or let too many feelings through, but they’re there, anyway.  
  
Draco doesn’t speak much, right then, but makes the usual agreeable noises and claims Harry for lunch. They’re trying to balance their time, especially since Harry is the one who’s out most often. Neville not only has to spend time around his gardens, he has to spend more time in the Manor since Draco’s still fighting the bond and the house would probably reject Neville otherwise.  
  
As he walks away with Draco, Harry reflects that he would have thought this was all mad nine years ago. But compared to having a piece of your mortal enemy’s soul in you and defeating him by standing in front of a Killing Curse, having to live in a house that would otherwise be determined to reject you is practically tame.  
  
Draco turns around when they’re inside. He seeks Harry’s eyes with his own, and Harry reaches out and balances his hands gently on Draco’s shoulders. He hasn’t seen that particular look since Draco needed reassurance all the time that Harry wasn’t going to abandon him because Ron and Hermione disliked him.  
  
“You really want him,” Draco breathes.  
  
_An interesting way to put it,_ Harry thinks. He would have thought Draco would be more wary of the friendship between Harry and Neville, instead of the desire.  
  
But he can answer both. “I do. And I like having him here. I like having him in the bond,” he says, and holds Draco’s gaze.  
  
Draco flinches, as he expects, and turns away, although he doesn’t try to remove Harry’s hands from his shoulders. “So,” he whispers. “I suppose I should have expected that. Do you really—I would never have been enough for you.”  
  
Harry sighs a little. _He_ supposes he should have been able to predict that particular form Draco’s insecurities would take. “You would have been enough for me if the bond had taken as it was supposed to,” he says plainly, and watches Draco twitch a little with surprise as he turns back to Harry. “But now that Neville’s in the bond, I want to welcome and live with him. He gives me more people to love.”  
  
Draco thinks about that, deeply. He always tends to turn Harry’s words over and over in his mind like jewels, looking at them from more angles than Harry thinks he needs to, which makes Harry even gladder that he’s always honest.  
  
Finally Draco says, “I think I can live with that.”  
  
Harry nods, and, because he feels better if he can have a sense of humor about it, he does tease, “You’ll tell me when you start wanting him?”  
  
Draco gives him a completely horrified look, and Harry laughs and leans in to kiss him. They are still bonded in so many ways.  
  
*  
  
It does hurt a little, Draco won’t deny that, to watch Harry walking and talking with Long—fine, _Neville_.  
  
It’s not that Draco thinks Harry is going to fall desperately in love with _Neville_ just because of the bond and leave him behind. They’re all in this together (a fact that Draco often wakes up wishing he could forget). They can’t do anything about the fact of the bond, and Draco knows that the links between him and Neville will strengthen, too.  
  
But Harry always exudes a subtle sense of challenge when he’s with Draco. He tenses and looks around as though he thinks he’ll have to keep Draco safe from reporters or friends or assassins who are convinced that Draco’s laid the Imperius Curse on their precious “Savior.”  
  
And the sad thing is, he did have to do that for a while.  
  
But now it’s over, and Draco wishes Harry could relax around him and slip into the bond as into a warm bath. The way he’s doing with Neville.  
  
_Is it because they’re more alike? Because they were both Gryffindors together? Because they were both on the same side of the war? Because they both might have been the prophecy child if the Dark Lord had chosen differently?_  
  
The thought tears and tears at Draco, because those are all things he can’t change, similarities he can’t overcome without time travel. It worries him so much that he might, honestly, go to the Department of Mysteries and try to steal a Time-Turner if one still existed.  
  
But Harry, being Harry and able to feel Draco through the bond now as well as simply knowing him, figures it out and comes to their bedroom one night. They do have a bedroom together, but Neville has one just down the corridor, trying to maintain the level of privacy they still feel is necessary while also being as near as the bond demands.  
  
“What’s wrong?”  
  
Harry’s directness is sometimes a blessing, even if it’s also an extra bond between him and Neville that Draco can’t help but resent. So he doesn’t lie.  
  
“You’re so like him,” he whispers instead, leaning forwards to put his hands on Harry’s knees where he sits on the bed. Harry blinks but doesn’t look away. “So much like a brave and decent and honorable man. I’m not. What if you end up feeling closer to him than you do to me?”  
  
Harry leans forwards and kisses him. Draco kisses back, but he can’t be reassured by just that, and he’ll pull away if Harry tries to use it to silence him.  
  
Harry, luckily, doesn’t. He just gives Draco a smile that he can feel as well as see with Harry this close and continues, “I can’t do that, Draco. The bond is a true bond that links all three of us.”  
  
“But I might end up _thinking_ you do, even if you really don’t,” Draco grumbles. He needs to hear more words, even if Harry’s are already beginning to soothe the wound that has festered in his soul for days.  
  
“Then feel _this_.”  
  
Harry sends such a burst of love down the bond that it’s like being overwhelmed by a huge, leaping dog. Draco falls down on the bed under its influence, and Harry rolls over on top of him, pressing their groins together and smiling so brightly that the last bits of Draco’s doubt thaw.  
  
He reaches up and tangles his fingers in Harry’s hair, smiling at him. “I love you,” he whispers.  
  
“I _thought_ that might be the case,” Harry says contentedly, and sets about putting up the Occlumency wall that will mean they don’t disturb Neville.  
  
*  
  
Neville pretends he doesn’t feel Draco watching him from the edge of the garden. Other than a quick glance now and then as he passes back and forth, doing something, and the times he came up and waited for Harry to join him, this is the first time Draco has really seen the flowers.  
  
Neville is proud of them. The soil and the sunlight here proved as good as he’d suspected. Draco told him he could use anything, including house-elf assistance, and now the violet sunflowers are tall, towering over the small knots of Potion herbs and the smaller flowers like violets that Neville grows for their beauty as much as for their uses.  
  
“Longbottom.”  
  
Even though he has to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep from smiling, Neville keeps working and doesn’t turn to acknowledge Draco. They have to stick to certain rules, or Draco will backslide. Neville knows it like he knows the feeling of a petal under his finger.  
  
Finally, Draco sighs and says, “ _Neville_.”  
  
“Yes?” Neville asks at once, turning around and brushing some of the dirt off his hands. “Was there something I can do for you?” He smiles at the look on Draco’s face. He’s worked hard to make his tone of voice normal instead of snappish or mocking, and the effect is there in the way Draco blinks.  
  
His eyelashes are long, Neville finds himself thinking, and even admiring the small shadows they cast on Draco’s cheeks. He shakes his head a little. Of course he won’t take advantage of observations like that without Draco’s permission, and right now they’re little more than distracting.  
  
“Why do you like gardening so much?”  
  
“Excuse me?” Neville blinks and rests back against the stone wall, staring at Draco. They seem to gape at each other a lot, he thinks. Maybe it’s to counterbalance the easy smiles he shares with Harry.  
  
Draco sighs. He hops up on the wall and faces Neville as though he usually sits there. Maybe he sits that way on some chairs and tables and desks in the Manor, Neville thinks. He wouldn’t know. Draco doesn’t act that casual around Neville, not ever.  
  
“I can see being interested in Herbology as a school subject,” says Draco, eyeing his fingernails as if he thinks they can pick up dirt just by being around Neville. “But how did you stay interested in plants after that? They don’t move around or make noise or magic. They’re _boring_.”  
  
“How did you stay interested in Potions?”  
  
“But you can do all sorts of subtle things with potions!”  
  
Draco is gaping at him in a way that makes Neville think even the inside of his throat is attractive. He blushes and shoves down that thought. Now is not the _time_. “And you can do the same sort of things with plants. The difference is that you use magic to handle them or grow them, not make magic directly from them. But you have to know all about them. They respond to the sun and the breeze and all sorts of other things. They’re…alive.”  
  
“I was never good with plants.”  
  
“Like I never was with potions.”  
  
Draco glances at him quickly. “So is it as simple as that? You’re still in love with what you’re good at?”  
  
Neville manages to stop his cheeks from burning at the way Draco’s phrased it, and thinks about it instead. Yes, perhaps it is. “Maybe,” he hedges. “As long as you can acknowledge that plants are interesting to some people.”  
  
“And you can acknowledge that some people might have reasons to be interested in Potions?”  
  
Neville smiles back. “I never doubted or denied that, you know.”  
  
Draco snorts and hops off the wall. “You didn’t have to. The doubt was all over your face.”  
  
“I don’t mean to doubt you, Draco.”  
  
Even though Neville didn’t touch Draco the way he fleetingly thought about doing, his words stop him anyway. Draco turns and gapes at him again. Then he hurries away.  
  
Neville is left to wonder whether that went well or not. But after a little while, he shakes his head and turns back to the garden.  
  
Flowers still need to be weeded whether or not he’s settling into his new bond.  
  
*  
  
The first kiss happens one evening when Neville is sitting by the bay window looking out on the garden, and he’s so tired and happy and satisfied that Harry can feel it humming along the bond and filling the air around him with a thick purple and red like dusk.  
  
Harry has followed that feeling like a scent, drinking it in, among other things because he had a tiring day at Auror training today and Draco is irritable and spiky about a potion not behaving properly. He pauses in the doorway of the sitting room, not entering until Neville turns around and smiles sweetly. Then he sits down beside him and looks at him expectantly.  
  
“The flowers are such stupid little things sometimes.”  
  
Harry hides a smile. He’s never heard anyone talk about flowers in quite that way, although admittedly he doesn’t spend a lot of time listening to the grumblings of any house-elf except Kreacher. “What do you mean?”  
  
“They grow around each other, and they don’t know what to do with a weed when it pops up, and they put up hopeful tendrils where something will crush them in a moment,” Neville explains, rolling his eyes. “I have to teach them and train them up trellises and coax them around corners and take away the weeds, and it’s tiring.”  
  
He looks out over the garden again, and his face glows with the outer reflection of that inner excitement until Harry’s drawn, and drawn, and drawn. He reaches across, and even as Neville turns to him with an inquiring expression, Harry cups his chin and kisses him.  
  
It’s not a bad first kiss, Harry finds himself thinking. Neville’s lips are warm and a little chapped, and the sweetness in the bond expands around him and holds him. For a moment, they lean on each other, holding each other close with cheeks and fingertips.  
  
Then Neville pulls back with a gasp. “I—I knew it was heading in this direction, but I still think you should ask Draco,” he says. The part of the bond that connects them both to Draco has gone still and alert, quivering.  
  
“You’re right,” says Harry. “Mostly. But wrong about one thing.”  
  
“What’s that?” For a moment, Neville looks as worried as he ever did about going into Snape’s classroom. Harry tugs at his hands gently. Neville is just a decent bloke under it all, who’s always worried about disrupting someone’s previous relationship.  
  
“ _We_ need to ask Draco,” Harry tells him, and pulls Neville after him.  
  
*  
  
Draco looks haughtily back and forth between Neville and Harry. Then he gives up the pretense and quivers a little as he sinks back on the bed. He shakes his head and doesn’t look at Harry now, because he’s not sure that he won’t snap when he does.  
  
“How could you do this to me?” he whispers.  
  
“If you were a little clearer, then maybe we could know what you mean.”  
  
Draco turns so he’s only focusing on Harry. He can’t look at Neville right now. Harry knows the limits of his temper, and they’ve argued a lot. But he did think Neville was the kind of person who wouldn’t ever cause an argument like this, or give Draco cause to worry about what kind of behavior he might be contemplating.  
  
“How could you kiss when you hadn’t asked my permission?”  
  
Harry raises his eyebrows at him. “You and I have kissed all the time without asking Neville’s permission.”  
  
“ _We_ were in a relationship before—”  
  
“But not bonded,” Harry interrupts. “Neville has been part of this bond since the beginning, and he deserves to be included, since he’s got to the point where he wants to be.”  
  
Draco turns to Neville. “You want to be? Harry didn’t just surprise you and kiss you without you wanting it, and you went along with it because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings?” He’s testing the bond even as he speaks, though, and he knows that’s not what happened. Neville would have turned Harry down with polite but cutting words if he didn’t want to, words that would effectively stop it from happening again.  
  
And Draco’s not blind to the way Neville looks at him any more than he’s insensitive to the sensations down the bond.  
  
“I want to be.” Neville sits down near the head of the bed, and Draco is very aware of the way the pillows dip under his weight and how Neville is looking at him, straight on, not out of the corner of his eye, which was the way he took most of his glances until today. “I’m worried about hurting you. That’s all.”  
  
“Not Harry?” Draco doesn’t know why, but he wants to keep yanking at this, pulling at this, until Neville admits that he didn’t anticipate everything, either.  
  
“No. Harry’s accepted it better than anyone else.”  
  
Draco looks over at Harry, who lounges on a pillow that he’s moved down to the bottom of the bed already. He’s grinning, and his face has a soft brightness as he looks from Draco to Neville, cocking his head a little.  
  
“I like to see the three of us together,” he murmurs, so softly that Draco would lose the sense of his replies if he was a little further away.  
  
“You’re mental,” Draco says.  
  
Harry pushes a whole lot of feelings down the bond at him that prove he’s just as sane as anyone else. Draco sighs and turns to Neville.  
  
“Why do you think we can’t have something we all want?” Neville asks quietly.  
  
The bond around him right now is so soft and understanding that Draco answers before he thinks about it. “Because—that’s not the way it works. I don’t get anything I want, not really. Not even the bonding between me and Harry went the right way. Why should—why should _this_?”  
  
Neville studies Draco’s eyes for a second, then leans in and lays his hand on his cheek. He radiates sincerity even more easily than Harry does.  
  
“Because now there are three of us,” Neville murmurs. “Instead of just two. Or one, which I think was probably the case for you during a lot of the war?” He looks intently into Draco’s eyes, and Draco can’t help but nod. Neville smiles. “Then we’ll fight for it. We three together.”  
  
And that’s comfort, maybe false in the end, but the kind of comfort Draco needs to reach out, and hesitantly gather Neville into his embrace.  
  
*  
  
It’s harder than Neville expected, trying to get three people on a bed and all kissing and touching each other at once. On the other hand, at least he knows no one else here has any more experience with it than he does.  
  
And there _is_ something nice about reaching out and touching Draco and Harry, now one, now the other, with hands slipping on sweat-slick shoulders and through hair that feels softer than Neville knew hair could be and tangling with fingers that feel longer than they should, too.  
  
Draco raises his head and gasps, and Neville leans in to kiss him. There’s the touch of slick tongues, such sweetness for a second that Neville wonders what kind of flowers Draco has been munching on, and then a determined attempt to drown him in kisses against the pillows.  
  
Or is that Harry crouching beside him and then rolling down with a laugh so that it’s hard to focus on him? Neville wants to stir that laugh again. He reaches out, but Harry has already rolled again, almost off the bed, and now he’s crouching on the bed and reaching out as if he wants to get hold of someone…  
  
Neville bucks. The _someone_ he has hold of is very definitely Neville.  
  
After that, it melts, not least because the bond is spreading all over everything and mixing them into a mass of desperate, reaching limbs and hands that tremble as they reach for each other. Neville knows he’s feeling Draco’s pleasure, and hearing Harry’s gasps, but he isn’t sure whether the specific sensations of touch are his or not.  
  
He knows he’s sucking someone’s cock even as he tasting someone else’s tongue, and they can’t both be true at the same time. But they blend in his memories.  
  
So do the moments when they come. There’s three of them, and Neville feels himself lifted and rocked by the cascading waves of pleasure and happiness and delight, which is wonderful, although he’s wrung-out at the end.  
  
He’s gasping on the bed, his hands outflung, when he feels someone take his right hand. The onslaught of the bond has dimmed a little, probably because they’re all so exhausted. Neville turns his head and finds himself staring into Harry’s face. Harry bends down and grins and kisses him.  
  
“That was excellent,” he whispers.  
  
Neville wonders for a second whether Draco feels differently, and that’s why he’s not over here saying something like it. But then he feels a muffled dimness in the bond, at the same moment as Harry snorts, nudges his shoulder with one hand, and points. When Neville looks over, he sees Draco already asleep.  
  
But not curled-up hard the way Neville has sometimes seen him sleep in the past month. Relaxed and dangling, his face still slightly polished by his smile.  
  
“He always does that,” Harry whispers, and Neville treasures the little confidence, the trust that gave it to him and the fact that now he knows. “Now, do you need to get up and use the loo? I’m going, if you don’t need to.”  
  
Neville smiles at Harry, relieved to know that even in his exhaustion he’s generous like that. “I’m knackered. You go.”  
  
Harry smiles at him and ducks away, and Neville rolls over to lie with his forehead against Draco’s back. He closes his eyes, knowing he might be asleep before Harry gets back.  
  
But it doesn’t matter. That he _will_ come back, and be with them, is something Neville also knows.  
  
**The End.**


End file.
